Number of the Beast: Difference between revisions

== Real Life ==

* Scholars contend that the number in the Revelation was a code for Nero. When treated as Hebrew numbers, the letters of "Nero Caesar" add up to 616, and "Neron Kesar", the Greek version of his name, to 666.

** One theory relies on the assumption that 666 is purely symbolic, not some code: basically, the number 6 is supposed to represent man ("a human number"), because man was made on the 6th day. Also, the fact that there are ''three'' 6s is meant to stand for [[Satan]], the Beast of the Sea, and the Beast of the Earth being an evil mockery of the Holy Trinity. This theory is total hogwash; as noted above, the number would have been written in [[wikipedia:Greek numerals|Greek numerals]], and the idea of "six-hundred-and-sixty-six" having anything to do with "three sixes" is a bit of a stretch (place-value notation would only have just been invented in India at the time, and it would not arrive in the Middle East until transmitted by Muslim Persian mathematicians in the 9th century).

* It was a joke in Real Life during Ronald Reagan's presidency because "Ronald Wilson Reagan" is 6 letters, 6 letters, 6 letters. (Furthermore, Ronald Reagan had his house, 666 St. Cloud Road, renumbered 668, from superstition.)

** US Route 666, from Gallup, NM to Monticello, UT was re-numbered US 491 in 2003, but retains the "Devil's Highway" nickname. A very dangerous road for many years and once known for hairpin turns which were unsafe at any speed, it was the subject of various superstitions as well as a target for sign theft.

* Another highways example. On northbound Interstate 29 just north of North Sioux City, South Dakota, there was a sign that used to read "Elk Point 6 / Sioux Falls 66." At some point in the mid-00s, the sign was changed to read "Elk Point 7 / Sioux Falls 66." Either the small town of Elk Point moved a mile to the north, or people got uncomfortable about the 666 associations and asked to have the sign changed.

* The P.O. Box address for This Is True—who also has Get Out Of Hell Free cards to keep up—is 666. According to the owner, he had had box number 668 for a while, then noticed 666 was free. When he inquired about it, he learned it was not to be offered to avoid people being offended. Since he specifically asked for the number, though, the post office figured it safe to give him the box.

* SF and computing journalist [[Dave Langford]] once wrote a computer program that could prove that ''any'' name [http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/ft107.html adds up to 666]. You just have to assign numbers to the letters correctly (and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to do that), then manipulate the numbers the right way (and there are more hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to do ''that'').

** Not that it's still avoiding the trope, but Intel could get away with it by fudging with the numbers. The increment suggests the clock speed was divided by 3 somewhere. 2/3 is 0.6666... Which at any given point you decide to chop off how many 6's you want, you could round up the last one to 7.

* A church was "lucky" enough to get 666 as part of its phone number. They quickly changed it. On the other hand, the University of San Francisco, a Catholic medical college, had 666 as one of its proprietary prefixes throughout the '90s, mostly for dormitory rooms.

* Here's one for the oddity department: Yahoo! Sports lists athletes and assigns them an ID number in the URL. For hockey, guess who gets 666? [http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/666 Miroslav Satan] (though it's pronounced Shuh-tan, and spelled Šatan in Slovak).

*** If you plug in athlete number 616, you get Richard Smehlik, a player for the [http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/616 New Jersey Devils]. I seriously think that Yahoo! employees are just fucking with us.

* The UN leaves seat number 666 free at meetings.